


come unbind your shattered wings

by findingkairos



Series: to you I gift the end of things [5]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Actually Gods AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Blood God Technoblade (Dream SMP), Canon-Typical Violence, Fantasy, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Loyalty, Philza Minecraft-centric (Dream SMP), Platonic Relationships, Technoblade Gets a Hug (Dream SMP), Technoblade-centric (Dream SMP), Winged Philza Minecraft (Dream SMP), aetwt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:21:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29032347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/findingkairos/pseuds/findingkairos
Summary: Tommy hadn't been there when the Butcher Army had tried to execute Techno and then realized just what he is—what Philza is. It's the only reason why he's getting a pass now.(Techno and Phil talk about Ghostbur, find Tommy beneath their floorboards, and figure out what retirement means on a server world that knows what they are. All in all, it’s an eventful week.)
Relationships: Technoblade & Philza Minecraft (Dream SMP), Wilbur Soot (Dream SMP) & Philza Minecraft (Dream SMP)
Series: to you I gift the end of things [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2104326
Comments: 38
Kudos: 641
Collections: Completed stories I've read





	come unbind your shattered wings

**Author's Note:**

> ( _swallows dive through the air in pairs_ — call off the ghosts, there is no place for them here)
> 
> Some context:  
> Wilbur is Philza's "son" (affectionate, fond, but not adopted nor blood-bound) but Tommy is not. He's just some kid that Wilbur picked up and treated as a protégé. And yes, this fic is a sequel of sorts to _the fire sermon_ ; I hadn't intended to write one, but, well. Here we are.

“So what happened with Wilbur?”

Philza turns. He’s shed that useless human skin, the one that leaves him blond and blue-eyed and deceptively innocent. More than one person has fallen for the guise over the years, and every single time Techno sees those guileless eyes convince yet another mortal that there are no angels here, just a winged human, he feels like laughing.

But Philza is many-winged and many-eyed now, and holy fire is blurring the outlines of his form. Techno tilts his head and, yeah. There’s the music, humming hymns.

“What about Wilbur?” Philza asks, and like the blood god’s voice his words echo. They’re not yet Words, but they’re close.

“You were fond of him for a long time.” Techno himself has slipped back into his pretend skin, and he relishes in the viscerally sharp boundaries of it now. He presses the fingertips of a hand together, marvels at the sensation. He makes sure there is no accusation in this echoless voice when he adds, “And yet when you arrived, you struck him down.”

Angels are always moving in some form—feathers, fire, light. But Philza projects the impression of an eerie stillness anyway, in a fashion that would make any newly-forged angel weep in envy.

“I was,” Philza admits, and those are Words. “I am.”

He doesn’t continue, unwilling to speak into reality the rest of it. Techno does it for him: “You fulfilled his wish.”

Philza flutters his wings, and it sends a rush of warm wind through Techno’s hair. He tucks a piece behind his ear. Ah, the humble pleasures of a mortal life; he has hair to braid and weave into intricate designs.

But Philza hasn’t tucked away the angel parts of himself to fit back into this realm’s boundaries; Techno can still hear him humming in those greater tones, singing some of the oldest hymns. “And now?” he asks, and makes sure to turn away.

Not that it stops Philza. The blinking eyes are many but his edges are still bleeding into the other dimensions; and yet. And yet.

“Now?”

“He’s still a ghost.” Techno huffs, and steam rises in a cloud before his face. One of the simpler pleasures, too, of living somewhere cold: it’s a microexample of the clouds of stargas that still linger in the heart of the universe. It’s been a while since they’ve gone to see those. Maybe they should make a trip out there, now that their latest stint of living incognito has so abruptly ended.

“I bent enough rules, making him a ghost. I cannot be more selfish than I already have been.”

Words, again. Techno turns back. Philza doesn’t meet his eyes, which is an impressive feat considering that Phil has many and can currently peer into all the planes, while Techno only has two and this one.

“Yes you can,” Techno counters. He breathes in, and the air is cold and sharp like knives. “You’re the Angel of Death. What net ensnares you?”

Philza—hums.

“Oh, you—” Techno bites down on the rest. He doesn’t need to curse for Philza to know his annoyance, not when Philza is already wincing, no doubt at the emotion-flavor now coating his tongues of flame.

Philza lowers his voice, presses it flat to remove the harmonics, pauses the humming long enough to say, “You know that there’s a slippery slope.”

That’s true. If Philza starts bringing people back to life, then where does he stop? Does he do so for everyone that asks? Does he do so for everyone on this server? Will he resurrect Wilbur every time he dies, or for whoever that Wilbur grieves for? He is an angel, but his domain is vast.

Techno feels the thrumming in his veins, the rush of blood roaring in his ears, and tempers the river enough to reach out. His fingers pass through Philza’s fire harmlessly, sink into the light until he feels feathers beneath his fingertips.

Philza goes unnervingly still.

“If that’s how you like it,” Techno allows, and thumbs away a tear from beneath a celestial eye. Philza blinks, then closes it. Techno keeps his hand outstretched. “If that’s what you want.”

It wouldn’t even have to be Philza resurrecting the mortal he’d found so interesting, is the thing. Techno is Technoblade is the blood god, and his domain is as vast as Philza’s. He rules over blood in all its contexts, and it would be so easy to demand more blood from someone who’s already died a violent death.

But Wilbur would come back as he’d been before he’d died for the third time: mad, crazed, unbalanced. What cruelty would it be, to resurrect someone into that state? What kindness would it be, to give them another chance to change their course?

What temptation would it be, for this server whose inhabitants think they can play god, and yeah, Techno understands why Philza is hesitating. Doesn’t mean he has to like it.

But then again, one of the many forms of blood is that of the covenant. He would sunder realms and crack open universes if Philza ever asked it of him, and he knows the angel would do the same—or worse. Compared to that, a little light revival is nothing.

* * *

They had expected silence. They had expected avoidance, and awe, and a wary kind of respect that always comes when people realize that you could blot out their existences with just a thought.

They’re not expecting Tommy to be rummaging around beneath Techno’s house, far below enough and quiet enough to go undiscovered—if they’d been anyone else, at least.

Techno notices, though, when his golden apples start to disappear.

Philza is gliding around the arctic, hovering above the snowy landscape and casting light like he would shadow. He has no need of the saturation or the regen, not when the weapons of these mortals cannot even draw blood. And Techno himself is enjoying the façade of a retirement; he hasn’t gone out to pick a fight in months. There is no reason for either of them to be going through their stock of golden apples at a battlefield rate.

Unless it’s not them. Unless it’s someone else, and at that thought Techno hefts his axe and turns his ears to seeking out intruders.

There’s nothing out by the turtles; nothing by the dogs. His pacing around the borders of their small territory spirals inwards. He sniffs, and on the wind—in the frigid cold—there’s the ashy scent of wood smoke. Someone’s set a fire, and it’s not them.

He follows it to a small hole in the ground. There’s only a thin stream of smoke, just small enough that it’s blown away by the wind before they’d spotted it from the cabin, and by the angle—yeah. Whoever is here is living beneath their house.

“Philza,” Techno says, and the angel appears in a bloom of fire by his side. “You seeing this?”

Philza drifts forward in lieu of an answer. His lower wings drag through the snow, leaving a gleaming furrow behind, but he doesn’t notice and it doesn’t matter, anyway. He knows how much Techno loves the image of a remote and snowy cabin, and he’s always been good about these kinds of things.

Eventually he says, “Yes. It’s Tommy.”

Techno stares, but Philza doesn’t blink, not even the eyes on his feathers. Alright then.

Axe in hand, Techno descends. Philza stays on the surface to watch his back.

What—who they find—is Tommy, shivering and shaking out of his wits, hunched protectively over himself, wrapped in blankets and huddling next to a fire. He doesn’t look up even when Techno scuffs a shoe in the dirt, breathes loudly enough to hear.

But he’s murmuring under his breath: “Please. Please, please.”

At least Philza hadn’t come down here in his true form. That might have shocked Tommy enough to give him a heart attack.

“Phil,” Techno says, and keeps his voice even when that shuts Tommy up like he’d yelled. “I need you down here.”

The angel of death is the first and oldest companion that the blood god has ever had. Philza knows what it means when Techno calls him Phil, and it’s the blond and blue-eyed man with only a single pair of wings who drops down the small dirt hole.

“What’s going on?” he asks, as though he hadn’t been aware of this hole or its occupant.

Tommy curls up further. He’s whispering, now. He’s promising things that Techno has only ever heard in one place in his long life, and it makes him wonder where Tommy had learned it.

“Tommy’s here,” Techno says. He hefts his axe and rests it on his shoulder. He does not react when Tommy cringes away. “You know Tommy, yeah?”

“He’s the kid that followed Wilbur around, yes.” Phil looks down, then up. He has his sympathetic face on again. “Why don’t you come up, Tommy, and get warmed up. It’s cold down here.”

Tommy shivers and doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t protest, either, when Phil gets a hand on his elbow and helps him up.

The first thing that Techno notices when Tommy’s no longer hunched over his ribs is that he’s far too skinny. Tommy has always been small and scrappy, and that appearance of youth—no matter the weird aging that players always undergo—had been both an advantage and a hindrance at once, but this time he looks frail. Fragile. Nothing at all like the firecracker who’d been so convinced that he’d been right, who had challenged the man with the Blood God nickname to a duel over the honor of his friend, who had insisted on saving a dying country.

Who had followed Wilbur around like a little protégé duckling on the man’s heels, and Techno understands why Phil is being gentle. There is legacy, there is history, there is the unnamed need to respect a dead man’s memory.

Even if it’s one that will be lost in the relentless march of time. Perhaps especially because it’s so fleeting in the grander scheme of things.

“There’s stew on the fire,” Techno says, and leads them on the slow climb upwards.

* * *

They get some food into Tommy—not a lot, more broth than stew, but it’s better than nothing and it puts at least a little color back in his cheeks. They set him up in front of the fire with furs and blankets and leave him to rest.

Then Phil leads them outside. The door’s not even fully closed before he’s spreading his wings.

Techno backs off, a quick one-two step, giving Phil enough space to launch up and away if he wants. Phil doesn’t take it. Instead he unfurls himself again, his edges melting into fire and light, shedding his human guise like he’d dusted off snow at the door.

“He’s so young,” is the first thing that Phil says when he’s settled again. Techno leans in; he is always warm, but Philza exudes a comfort that’s part angelic and part death’s domain and all him.

“He is.” Techno remembers the excitement over new weaponry, the eager anticipation in the little blackstone vault, the wide-eyed hot anger when he’d been called out for performing a coup d’état of a lawfully elected president. “Why is he here?”

Techno could find out himself, but he’s still in mortal guise and Philza isn’t; it’s faster this way. He waits for Philza, listens to his humming, starts harmonizing when Philza sings the bass and baritones while lost in thought.

“He had nowhere else to go,” Philza says at last.

And then Techno remembers: right. Tommy had been exiled. It’s so hard to keep track of these things when mortals live their lives so quickly. They change their minds on a whim, make decisions on a dime. He’d still been reinforcing his cabin’s walls when this small world’s admin had made his exile-or-else threat.

But whatever’d happened in that exile had left Tommy quiet, without words, a shell of his firebrand self.

Techno cheats a little, shakes loose some shadows, peers through the cracks in the universe. He inhales, and copper coats the back of his tongue. The young man is dozing off in front of the hearth; his soul is a guttering ember, but still there.

“Is he still exiled, then?” Techno had settled here in the remote north even before that reckoning with a group of mortal politicians who’d thought they could keep an execution a state secret. If that admin guy hadn’t lifted Tommy’s exile before he’d found his way here, then he’s a fugitive.

Or, well. Techno supposes that Tommy has always been a fugitive the entire time he’s known him. He’s just also going to be on the run from the small world’s admin, as well as his own best friend and the government he represents.

Philza spreads his wings. The universe peeks through his feathers. He hums again in thought, and this time he’s singing the third and fifth harmonics in minor key.

Techno waits, curling his toes in the snow and reveling in the sharp cold of it. Jordan can complain about the limitations of a mortal body all he wants—Techno still thinks there’s some beauty in the denseness of it, of a life lived quickly with interesting things happening in every moment, instead of something long and dragged out.

“Of a sort.” Philza folds some wings, sets others burning. Techno squints, but no, it’s just regular fire, the kind that doesn’t have a shred of holiness in it at all. “I’m sorry. I know I can’t speak for you, when I offered him warmth and shelter, but—”

Techno waves it off. “Not a problem at all, Philza, you know that.”

“Still.” The humming beneath Philza’s words turns discordant before the harmonics smooth out again. “What do you think, Techno?”

“I think that the kid can have a place to rest his head—maybe hear about what happened from him, instead of cheatin’—as long as he isn’t annoying. Did I tell you, Philza, about the first day he was in exile and I came to visit and he tried to _stab_ me—”

* * *

To Techno’s relief and confusion, Tommy isn’t loud at all. He’s quiet. He opens his mouth sometimes, ready to make a quip, a comment, and Techno always waits for one and is always left waiting.

Sometimes he tries to be loud. It’s like seeing a shadow of the previous Tommy Innit on the wall, those times, and Techno always shares a look with Phil when Tommy inevitably clams up.

He lets some things drop, though, or doesn’t realize that he’s doing so. Golden apples keep going missing from their stock, and Techno finds them tucked in a small corner between a chest and the wall where Tommy can get to it relatively easily. The same with some potions of healing, one of invisibility. He never reaches for armor or weapons, even though they are some of the very first things that anyone on a survival world is taught to have on hand.

It comes to a head one night when there’s a blizzard roaring outside. Techno reaches out and hums a question, wondering where Philza’s gone, and the angel hums an answer back.

_Gonna be done anytime soon?_

_Probably not, mate, the winds are_ wack _here._

Phil’s still fascinated with the way the local weather patterns work, here on a small world where the admins have mucked about with them, and it makes Techno smile even as he shakes his head.

Carl still ignores Techno when he trudges out, bundled up in three layers of furs, to bring him feed and stoke the stable fire again.

“Still mad at me about yielding to them?”

The horse snorts. He doesn’t look in Techno’s direction.

“Aw, come on. They had you at _axepoint_.” Techno shakes his head, bemused. Really, when he’d first come down to this small world at Wilbur and Tommy’s request, he hadn’t expected to become this attached to a _horse_ of all things.

 _But then again_ , Phil laughs at him, listening in on Techno’s one-sided conversation with an animal that might just be receiving the blessing of two gods instead of just one, _you’re the blood god. What did you think? That you wouldn’t find blood here?_

Blood of the sacrifice, blood of the covenant. Techno snorts himself and dusts his hands of the hearth ash. _Same to you, Phil. Heh. We both really thought retirement would stick._

_I don’t know about you, but I was doing pretty well. And you gotta mix it up a little, keep it fresh. Keep it interesting._

_I’ll have you know it was fine before—_

Carl knickers, sudden and loud, and Techno settles a hand around the hilt of his sword. He’s unsheathed it halfway before he realizes that Carl isn’t freaking out because a monster’s found its way into the stable.

It’s because Tommy is standing by the door, barefoot, a thin blanket around his shoulders. He’s wide-eyed. No armor, no weapons, just—shock.

“Hey, Tommy,” Techno says, and slides his sword back into its sheath. He does it as slowly and as quietly as he can, even cheats a little, but the movement still catches the guy’s eye.

It’s possible for them to widen even more, apparently, and Tommy startles, takes a half-step back, before he catches himself and forces himself forward. The door swings shut behind him.

“I, I’m sorry, sorry, sorry,” Tommy rambles, and hunches over himself. He’s whispering again, voice quiet, tone desperate in a way that Techno’s sure will hurt his throat.

“Sorry for what, Tommy?”

Techno doesn’t move. Tommy still flinches, shuts up, shuts down.

There’s not much they can do when he gets like this. Techno sighs and gives Carl one last pat—the horse eyes Tommy with suspicion, and yeah, Techno understands, Tommy can be very loud and very annoying and this new version of him is so out of character that Techno would be worried about a possession or a deal being involved, but—

But.

 _I’m on my way home,_ Phil whispers to him, and Techno walks up to Tommy quietly, hands outstretched, drapes his cloak over the guy’s shoulders for the short trek back to the house.

* * *

“You’ve gotta talk about it at some point.”

Tommy doesn’t flinch, but the hunched shoulders might be worse. Techno blows on his tea and takes a sip. Still a little too hot, but that’s fine, means it’ll be warm when Philza finally gets home after taking the long way around.

“Do I have to?” Tommy asks. It’s almost a whisper.

Techno shrugs. “Don’t gotta do anything you don’t want to,” he tells him. “But it’d be good for you. Talking through your problems, a burden shared is a burden halved, that sort of thing.”

“And you’re the person I should tell it to?”

“If you want to. Offer’s on the table.” Techno thinks for a moment, wondering. He sends a probing little nudge.

Phil responds almost immediately: _Yeah, I’d be fine with it_.

“Or you could talk to Phil, if that’d be better.” Tommy looks up discreetly, peeking out from beneath his fringe of hair; Techno pretends he hadn’t noticed. “You’ve seen how he is, right? He’s a good listener.”

“He killed Wilbur, when we’d—we’d won, and everything was fine again, just ‘cause Wilbur asked him to.” Tommy doesn’t raise his voice, but it does firm, even if the effect’s ruined a little by his voice trembling towards the end.

Phil stops humming. There’s silence in Techno’s metaphysical ears. Then the air shifts, and Techno’s ears pop, as Philza pinches a bit of the fabric of the universe to move more quickly from one point to another.

Baby steps. A distraction while Philza is folding his wings away again. “You can be more than one thing at once,” Techno reveals, and tries to tell it kindly. It’s easy to see things as just black or white, this or that; that fast delineation, friend versus enemy, is how mortals have survived for this long with just their wits alone. It’s a strength that the gods had crafted in them, but it’s also a curse.

Techno takes a moment to wonder what Jordan—what the good ol’ Captain and his duties filled with scales—would think about it, before he sets the thought aside. “And Tommy, life is complicated—you know that.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Tommy takes in a ragged breath, lets out a sigh big enough to rival the blizzard winds rattling the cabin. “It _shouldn’t_ be.”

“It’s the reason why Tubbo exiled you.”

Tommy makes a noise in the back of his throat, but at least he doesn’t curl up tighter. Techno leaves it at that. They’re going for baby steps, and anyway, Phil’s lingering at the door.

He takes the opportunity to give Tommy a moment to himself. Phil ducks in quickly when Techno lets him in, and he dusts off with the quick, practiced movements of someone who’s lived in the arctic for years. Which, well, they had at one point.

“Everything alright?” Phil asks, voice soft like he’s talking to Carl and the bees and the turtles. Confronted with that, Tommy does what everyone has ever done in the face of the angel of death, whose domain is the end of all things:

He talks.

They listen.

And yeah, Techno had wondered where Tommy had learned how to beg for mercy, but this is—

Complicated. Messy. Bloody, in a way, but not the kind of blood that he calls for as a god, and it’s messed up in a way that can only be _human_.

L’Manberg Wilbur would have been absolutely furious with this. Pogtopia Wilbur, though? Maybe not so much, and that’s one of the real tragedies of this latest rehash of a mythological story.

“But Dream was my _friend_ ,” Tommy insists after he’s done explaining.

“Friends don’t mess around with friends’s party invites,” Phil says. “Let alone make you take off your armor and blow it up every time.”

“He was doing it because—because—” Tommy whines, high in his throat, and buries his face in his hands. Techno flicks out a bit of shadow and snags the mug by Tommy’s elbow, brings it away from the edge of the table. “No, no, you’re wrong, he’s my _friend_ , he’s the only one that stayed. He’s the only one who cared.”

“And?” Phil squints beneath his hat. His face is shadowed, but his eyes are glowing. “You’re hiding from him, aren’t you? You’re worried he’s going to hurt you?”

“If he finds me, he’s gonna _kill me_ , I ran away from exile, I ran away from him, I—”

“Yeah, that’s some real mixed signals right there,” Techno adds, because it’s true. He and Phil are friends, and the idea that he might kill Phil or that Phil might kill him is—

Is—

Phil gives up the pretense of mortality, and Techno does the same, and there are wings brushing over shadows, entangling, and Techno hooks his ankle around Phil’s beneath the table.

_Tommy’s scared he’s going to get hurt._

_I know. I know. But we’re retired._

_We promised not to interfere as long as they didn’t forget_ , Phil points out, because he’s still got a flaming sword and he’s always been a little trigger-happy with his smites.

_Does this count?_

_Not sure. Did this happen before they tried to execute you?_

_Well, they definitely exiled him before they came after you and me._

Light hovers around Phil, pinpricks of distant stars growing larger as they draw near. There is an easy way to convince Tommy that he’ll be safe, and there is a hard way, and it’s obvious which one Phil wants to take. But he’s waiting for Techno to make a choice.

_We can, if you want. I’m fine with it. The server knows, anyway. But who? One of us? Both?_

It really depends. Philza is the angel of death, and he is universally angelic, not the new world ridiculousness of haloed-and-two-winged that the modern narrative likes to push. Technoblade is the god of blood, and to some people his appearance is a more horrifying eldritch horror; to others more familiar with what he represents, he is easier to witness than Philza.

Death and death’s domain, or blood of war and sacrifice?

 _Tommy already thinks I’m a bad person,_ Techno adds, because objectively it is a little hilarious, _for bringing withers to that revolution._

_Don’t worry. I don’t mind._

Oh, Phil. _He’s Wilbur’s protégé._

_And he’s his own person. It’s okay, Techno._

Part of friendship is allowing them space. Part of a good and healthy relationship—not this so-called friendship with Dream, not the fractured thing that’s become of Tommy’s with Tubbo—is letting them make their own choices, take their own risks.

“It’ll be fine, Tommy,” Phil says. He’s taking his time pulling out his wings, not the quick unraveling that’d been at the festival. Slowly, deliberately, letting senses adjust. Techno hums along with the major scale harmonics. “Dream might be an admin, but he’s not the only powerhouse on this server.”

Tommy’s breathing a little too quickly, still. Probably hyperventilating. Techno reaches out slowly across the table, presses his hand flat against Tommy’s chest.

The body stills beneath his hand. “Breathe,” Techno says, and Tommy inhales. “Hold it. Then exhale. Make every breath push against my hand, alright?”

To his credit, Tommy tries. Techno gives him something to push against, and the kid breathes, and by the nature of the exercise his breathing slows down.

By the time he’s done and collected himself enough to look up, Phil’s pulled out all the wings he can fit into this tiny cabin, feathers and wings and eyes and stars filling the space like a condensed universe. The ankle hooked around Techno’s is still firm, still there, but the rest—

Tommy stares wide-eyed, and it’s in awe, and Techno smiles.

And then Tommy says, “I fuckin’ knew it,” and it’s hubris, it’s bravado, it’s all whitened-knuckle determination of a scrappy mortal who’d rather try a kamikaze run than surrender. He sounds more himself than he has in the past week.

“So don’t worry about Dream,” Techno says. Tommy turns to look at him, eyes wide, and Techno lets go of the shadows and the bones, just a little. Just enough to be comfortable, here where Philza is folding the universe away around them, leaving a small bubble for table and chair and mugs of tea. Everything else is starlight, and Techno stretches and fills in the dark places where Philza’s dagger-point halo of light doesn’t cover. “As long as you are a guest in our home, no harm will come to you.”

* * *

They put the kid to bed. After, Techno sighs. He strokes the teapot with a fingertip and heats it up again, but he wants something stronger than peppermint after that headache of an explanation from Tommy. Maybe some chamomile.

Beside him, behind him, Philza spreads his wings and folds the both of them into his feathers. The kitchen is filled with heat and light and song, the humming harmonics of the universe thrumming through their bones.

“It always feels different,” the angel muses, “when you’re pretending to be human.”

He has no nose nor lungs to snort with, when he’s relaxed his grip on the mortal form this much, but Techno would if he did. Human bodies are so vibrantly expressive _._ “Better? Worse?”

Philza shakes his head, pushes the emotion-impression across for good measure, strong and indignant enough to make Techno snicker.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Not better or worse, just different.” Techno sighs again, rests his head on one of Philza’s wings. It shifts and accommodates for him.

“So?”

Techno presses back an emotion-impression of question. Philza strokes the tips of his feathers over some of Techno’s shadows.

“So?” Philza repeats. “What do you want to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re retired, and we’ve been given an excuse to interfere.” Philza’s tossing fire between his hands and wings again, holy will-o-wisps darting through the room and setting stars alight. “So we can either stay retired, or we can—meddle.”

Of course Philza wants to meddle. Death is patient, but there are many ways to arrive at the end of the road, and Philza’s always been interested in the more esoteric ways that mortals end up meeting him. Being warned by gods and then failing to heed it would certainly qualify.

But it’s on behalf of Tommy, who Wilbur had once been fond of—maybe not towards the end, with the encouragement to risk his life for inanimate objects against the small world’s admin, and then the infamous warrior that they’d pinned their revolutionary hopes on, but still.

“Chaotic and bloodthirsty,” Techno tells him fondly, and Philza’s overtone harmonics rise three octaves with his laughter.

He’s still giggling when he flicks a wing and brings up a small constellation, stardust hovering in the air as he draws. “So? You in?”

Techno looks, and then _looks_. Philza is gleaming in both this dimension and the others, vibrant, excited, with the additional sheen of someone who is looking for blood. Some of his wings are already armored, while others are stoking the fires in the hearts of forging stars.

“I dunno, Philza. He hasn’t tried and played god, per se.”

“But that’s not a _no_.”

“If we’re going to do this, then we should play by their rules—to make it fair, of course.”

“Of course. We’re going to be chill angel of death and god of blood.”

Techno thinks back to the small planet crafted solely to be conquered, and the way its inhabitants had reacted to someone fulfilling the objective within the first week of the realm’s lifespan. “They’re still going to cry foul, you know.”

“Let them try,” the angel of death purrs. The universe shivers. “We’ll set them straight.”

**Author's Note:**

> Both the blood god's and the angel of death's true voices end up with many overtones that hum and harmonize, like in [overtone singing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtone_singing), but Philza's is more prone to being lilting hymns and harmonics in major or minor keys than Technoblade's, who is essentially more "deadpan." :D
> 
> * * *
> 
> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> [LLF Comment Builder](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/post/170952243543/now-presenting-the-llf-comment-builder-beta)
> 
> **This author sees and appreciates all comments but may not reply due to exhaustion and anxiety.**
> 
> If you don’t want a reply, for any reason (sometimes I feel shy when I’m reading and not up to starting a conversation, for example), feel free to sign your comment with “-whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond!


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